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Demonising the Victorian Heroine's Coming-Of-Age In Marta Miquel-Baldellou Demonising the Victorian Heroine’s coming-of-age... 179 DEMONISING THE VICTORIAN HEROINE’S COMING-OF-AGE IN EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON’S LUCRETIA AND EDGAR ALLAN POE’S WOMEN’S TALES1 Marta Miquel-Baldellou 2 Abstract: In Victorian times, the female subject, as embodiment of domestic morality, contributed to the construction of middle-class ideology. In Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Lucretia (1846), the female protagonist apparently incarnates the ideal Victorian heroine. Nonetheless, through her coming-of-age, Lucretia’s privileged mind and lack of affection lead her to pursue ambitious aims in a men’s world. Edgar Allan Poe also referred to the incipient power women began to achieve. This article aims to analyse in which ways Victorian women’s awakening power is demonised through their coming- of-age, thus pursuing a transatlantic comparative analysis between Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia and Edgar Allan Poe’s women’s tales. Keywords: Transatlanticism, gender, Victorian heroines, gothic fi ction, coming-of-age, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Edgar Allan Poe. Resumen: En la época victoriana, los personajes femeninos, como personifi caciones de la moralidad doméstica, contribuyeron a la construcción de la ideología de la clase media. En la novela Lucrecia de Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1846), la protagonista aparentemente encarna el ideal de la heroína victoriana. Sin embargo, a lo largo de su proceso de ma- durez, su mente privilegiada junto con la falta de afecto la llevan a alcanzar ambiciosas metas en un mundo de hombres. Edgar Allan Poe también aludió al incipiente poder que las mujeres empezaban a conseguir. Este artículo pretende analizar el modo en que el poder emergente de las heroínas victorianas es demonizado a lo largo de su proceso de maduración, proponiendo un análisis comparativo transatlántico entre la novela de Bulwer-Lytton Lucrecia y las narraciones de mujeres de Edgar Allan Poe. Palabras clave: Transatlanticismo, género, heroínas victorianas, fi cción gótica, paso a la madurez, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Edgar Allan Poe. 1. INTRODUCCIÓN In a period marked by working class radicalism, urbanisation and the reorganisation of the private and public life, the question of women’s place became a crucial issue in the decade of the 1840s, while incipient feminism began to test the limits of the politics 1 Date of reception: March 2008. Date of acceptance and fi nal version: July 2008. 2 AGAUR research fellow, PhD candidate. Departamento de Inglés y Lingüística, Universidad de Lleida; [email protected] Odisea, nº 9, ISSN 1578-3820, 2008, 179-189 180 Marta Miquel-Baldellou Demonising the Victorian Heroine’s coming-of-age... of separate spheres. In Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Lucretia, published in 1846, the young female protagonist apparently seems naïve and compliant, and gradually, through her pretence and power to feign, she alters her appearance to look fragile and even sick. On the other shore of the Atlantic, Edgar Allan Poe’s women’s tales featured deceased female protagonists, whose presence was evocated by devoted and mournful widowers. Even though Poe’s women apparently look delicate and frail, heroines such as Morella, Ligeia, Madeline or even Berenice manage to trespass the limits of life and death through their wilfulness and determination to persist in time, resembling female vampire fi gures, while their self-will is often demonised by mystifi ed male narrators. Lucretia’s ambitious goals in a male context results in her demonisation as a woman, while her powerful will is often disguised behind her weak appearance to please Victorian ideals of femininity. Eventually, her vivid existence as a woman needs to be subdued through her enclosure in a lunatic asylum. Thus, deprived of exerting any infl uence over young and innocent women, she is also metaphorically excluded from the Victorian society. In contrast, Poe’s idealised and unearthly females, precisely because they perish, symbolise the narrator’s will to persist in time. Nonetheless, Poe’s women ressucitate, that is to say, they go back to the male narrator’s memory only through the inevitable appalling infl uence they exert on their despondent husbands. Poe’s heroines thus arise as men’s construct of the poetics of eternal beauty, while male horrifi ed narrators gradually discover their late wives’ ethereal appearance betrays a decidedly, and repulsive, strong will. 2. POE’S AESTHETICS AND BULWER-LYTTON’S ETHICS Poe portrayed his theory of aesthetics in his essays, while Bulwer-Lytton composed a series of novels portraying the ethics of young women and men coming of age. In his “Philosophy of Composition”, Poe envisioned Beauty as a transcendental reality whose essence is beyond the empirical knowledge of humanity. Drawing on Plato and Schlegel’s theories of beauty, Poe removed this concept from its ethical and theological context (Kelly 1956: 521-536), escaping the limitations of the mortal condition through a vision of the ethereal and eternal sphere of the Ideal (Gargano 1962: 339), which his heroines ultimately personify. Meanwhile, a rarefi ed ideal of women in the arts took hold in America toward the close of the 19th century, picturing females as being fi ner and purer than males, so that when women departed from these ideals they inevitably roused male anxieties (Springer 1986: 2, 7). In Victorian ethics, since the family came together within the domestic space, where the woman was assumed to develop her role, it was also the woman who, by extension, became the embodiment of a series of values that she both preserved and personifi ed. From then onwards, the woman, confi ned in her domestic space, exemplifi ed the pillars of Victorian society. Nonetheless, despite the prevalent importance attached to family ethics, the Victorian society was evolving due to industrialisation, progress and scientifi c breakthroughs. In this sense, Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia throws a note of caution. It dwells upon the disruption of the moral sanctum in the Victorian family and the result of seeking power outside the confi nes of the home, both as a refl ection of the reshaping of modern society and the consequences of industrialisation on the Victorian moral and ethical structures. Odisea, nº 9, ISSN 1578-3820, 2008, 179-189 Marta Miquel-Baldellou Demonising the Victorian Heroine’s coming-of-age... 181 3. WOMEN AS MALE CREATIONS AND WOMEN’S INITIATION THROUGH MALE TUITION It can be argued Poe presents his women as male creations, while Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia exemplifi es the result of the eminently-male education of a girl. Poe’s women exist due to the narrator’s will, since their presence is always fi ltered through the male gaze. They represent romanticised women and act as emotional catalysts for their male partners. The concept of using females merely as a means to a male end appears in “The Philosophy of Composition”, where Poe unveils his philosophy of beauty. The value of what is viewed lies solely in the response induced in the observer. Thus, the woman must die in order to enlarge the experience of the narrator, her viewer. As widely known, Poe asserted that the death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world. While subjects of his creations, they are also objects of his thoughts (Weekes 2002: 148). Women are ripe for this objectifi cation, the epitome of which is to fragment the female into parts and idealize one aspect of her body, such as is the case with Berenice’s teeth, Ligeia’s eyes, or Morella’s black hair (2002: 153). Thus, as Weekes asserts, Poe’s female characters often become a receptacle for their narrator’s guilt, a tabula rasa on which the lover inscribes his own needs. His fi ctional ‘ideal’ is a woman who can be subsumed into another’s ego and who has no need to tell her own tale. Nina Baym asserts that there “are neither portrayals of women at all, nor attitudes toward them, in Poe’s fi ction and biography” (Springer 1977: 222), since he uses females to stand for ideas that can almost be construed as morals of his tales. Thus, Poe’s feminine ideal can be perceived as merely a placeholder for some need in the narrator himself (Baym 1977: 222). Through language, he is granted the power to restore the lost women in his life (Bieganoswki 1988: 177). The horror that Poe’s stories dramatize is the impossibility of dying. Either the dead literally come back to life or their undying death is given form in the event of premature burial (Brown 1996: 449). Therefore, as Bieganowski mentions, the resurrection of his heroines becomes a linguistic event, an event re-enacted through the recall of fi ction (Bieganoswki 1988: 182). However, despite being his creator, the process is reversed, since it is often –the case that the husband’s status is explicitly stated as child- like compared to the erudition of his spouse (Weekes 2002: 153). Thus, despite acting as their creator, the narrator is always dependent on his female creations. While Poe’s heroines are objects of his imagination, Bulwer-Lytton’s Lucretia is the result of male education. Bulwer-Lytton contended that adult character and behaviour are determined by home circumstances and childhood upbringing. Lucretia is only four years old when she enters his uncle’s house for the fi rst time. Gradually Sir Miles, who is by this time approaching his old age, grows interested in his niece and considers whether he should make her heiress of all his possessions. The baronet, having paid no attention to the child previously, discovers the true nature of his niece for the fi rst time. Astonished by such a rare female character at such an early age, Sir Miles resolves to supervise his niece’s education by spending more time with her, as a result of which Lucretia manages to win her uncle’s affection.
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